Neopopulas Posted January 4, 2023 Clone Share Posted January 4, 2023 Since we're slowly transitioning over to Baldr the advertisements page is more and more important, because of this i dusted off my old UX cap and have been looking it over. It brought up a couple of questions for me. 1. Is there any intention to show any information about the advertisement page on the home age of Badlr? I ask this because on OGMW, the home page has a lot of stuff on it sure, but the 'Games & Ads' has a ride of place on the page at the top left and is one of the most obvious panels on that page. Even though it doesn't show you everything, it does show you two things. 1) That there are new posts there. 2) What the most recent post is. 2. Are we open to some minor UX changes to the Advertisement page itself? I'll expand on the first question a little first. When I go to Badlr - and its the same with OGMW - I just go to the home page and go from there, this is why its always been important that things like 'my games' has been on the home page. With that in mind, when you go to the home page of Baldr, you can see quite a bit, but you can't see anything about advertisements (unless i'm missing something). Now I know where they are, and most people will, but some people won't, and a quick look at the home page means you will miss all advertisements. As far as i know there isn't even any way to see that there are new posts in advertisements, so you don't even know when you need to check, meaning you'll just have to randomly check to see if there is anything new. It might pay to add something to the home page to at least show that there are new posts in the Advertisements forum. • As an aside I notice you can minimize the forums on the home page (Announcements & Events and Site Discussion being the most common to be minimized, but is there a way to know that things have been updated in those forums without expanding them again? If they are minimized, and someone posts in there, is there an obvious way to know you should check them? Once in the Game Advertisements forum, it feels a little.. messy? There is a lot of empty space and a lot of wasted space. This means it can be harder to parse the games on offer. I think in part its just because each row is much taller than it was over on OGMW. All the information is the same. The name of the game, the game system, the poster and even when it closes, but it doesn't feel like its displayed as well as it could be. I think the main problem is that the game system, close date and (i'm assuming) the GM's name take up a lot of height on the right hand side with a lot of padding around the avatars. Now i don't know how hard changes to this sort of thing would be but if i could offer my suggestions, i've thrown together a little example that might make things look a little cleaner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Posted January 4, 2023 Clone Share Posted January 4, 2023 Most of this is Eric territory for a reply, but as far as seeing new posts: The follow button is present in games and threads for that purpose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neopopulas Posted January 4, 2023 Author Clone Share Posted January 4, 2023 Can you follow an entire forum? For example, can i follow the advertisements page so i know when there are new posts there? Because thats only what i'm worry about. I mean i say 'worry' but its not really a worry more like just a thing i noticed, it could be easy for people - new people especially - to not notice there are new posts in the Advertisements thread because they either don't know, or just forget to check that forum, since if you're on the front page there isn't any way to know if there are new posts there (that i know of). So you either have to check the advertisements forum every day to see if there is something new there or you might miss new games. Its not a super high priority, i just noticed it when i was looking at the OGMW front page that its very easy to know when there are new ads posted but in Baldr you have to actively check the forum to find out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Posted January 4, 2023 Clone Share Posted January 4, 2023 Ah, I think we’ve just got a slight disconnect on how Game Ads translated to Baldr. The Advertisements section is no longer a forum like it is on OGMW, and the way it is laid out is part of Invision. Games are what would normally be called Clubs in the basic Invision framework, and the Advertisements section is part of that setup. We’ve tweaked the Advertisements section behavior slightly with custom add-ins, but I can’t speak to having a “new ad” type of notification. Eric will need to answer that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted January 4, 2023 Clone Share Posted January 4, 2023 I get where the feedback is coming from, for sure. I have some ideas I'm ruminating on (sidebar widget for game advertisements? pseudo-forum? advertisement carousel?), but we should stick this on the Trello. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neopopulas Posted January 4, 2023 Author Clone Share Posted January 4, 2023 Good to hear. I get that the way the whole forum structure works is kinda different now and getting things exactly the way OGMW works isn't possible (or honestly, necessary) I just have a on and off UX background (and a slightly compulsive need for structure) and when i noticed this my brain went 'this isn't perfectly optimal, better hyper focus on it for awhile' Honestly squishing down the ads so they fit a little better might actually make more of a difference but if you can come up with something to sort of bring the ads into peoples faces and make it more 'something new has happened here' poppy like even just showing the most recently active thread from the advertisements forum somewhere on the home page so people know things have changed there and encourages them to look then i'm sure that would help drive people to those games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted January 13, 2023 Clone Share Posted January 13, 2023 Added to the feature request queue! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted June 18, 2023 Clone Share Posted June 18, 2023 Starting work mocking up this feature for the home page: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted July 4, 2023 Clone Share Posted July 4, 2023 https://test.myth-weavers.com/index.php?/topic/1295-dev-news-stream/&do=findComment&comment=81732 Deployed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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